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Starting July 1, 2015, members will no longer be able to start new CoolHub projects or invite friends to projects. Projects on coolhub.imsa.edu will be accessible and functional through June 30, 2016.

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CoolHub.IMSA is IMSA’s online platform for collaborative innovation in STEM teaching and learning. Envisioned as an experimental space for innovation, CoolHub has provided thousands of members a project-based experience for problem solving, curriculum development and team communications. Today, there are over 3,500 members and almost 650 projects on CoolHub.

Mentor Matching Engine projects represent our area of largest growth. This part of the platform connects teachers, high school students and mentors for secure, online mentoring and inquiry. Of all the CoolHub experiments, this one demonstrates the greatest need and potential for sustained growth.

Looking ahead, the Mentor Matching Engine (MME) is the target for further development, including creating a customized platform for its operation. To this point, the MME has co-existed with CoolHub on IMSA’s Liferay platform. Now it needs its own environment. Existing MME members will notice improvements starting fall of 2015. If you or your school has an interest in participating in MME, contact Emily Cooper at ISTC for more information.

Existing members of CoolHub projects, other than MME, will continue to have access to all CoolHub features except new project creation, new member invitations and video conferencing. All project information, including libraries and other created content, will remain secure and available. As a safeguard, you should make a back-up copy of your content, as IMSA is not providing further development of Coolhub. Here’s a partial list of the CoolHub features that will continue to be supported for free:

The BISE Lahore matric result 2015 is not far away. Students are waiting for their results desperately. Lahore Board has not yet annoucned the official result date, but the result will be announced in August or septemebr 2015. BISE Lahore matric result 2015. Meanwhile, the board of intermediate and secondary education Gujranwala (BISE Gujranwala) will also be announced on the same day. Students can get all their results online on the official board websites.

BISE Lahore matric result 2015will be published on official website of BISE Lahore. The board is yet to announce the result but students are eagerly want to know their result or atleast the date when the result will be announced.

Not only did Trisha Prabhu come away with first prize in Power Pitch this year, she is a finalist with her cyberbullying project, renamed ReThink, in Google's Science Fair. Watch here for information how to vote for her project.

"I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank those that mentored me through my anti-bullying product prototype. As part of being an innovative and enterprising 13 year-old, from a young age, I have enjoyed developing product ideas and pitching them to potential investors. The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA - https://www.imsa.edu/), a gifted college preparatory school for 10-12th graders runs a program called “Talent PowerPitch”, where the students pitch their Product ideas to real investors at 1871(http://www.1871.com/) an entrepreneurial hub in Chicago, for cash prizes. Despite the fact I’m only 13, two of the directors of this program, Carl Heine and Jim Gerry, have allowed me to compete against the high school students for the last 3 years (I did my first PowerPitch when I was 11). This year, I pitched my anti-bullying software product idea as part of the Prelims and at the Finals at 1871 and won 1st place. Thank you Carl and Jim for believing in me all along." source

Today's first IMSA Meetup at 1871 has attracted an amazing group of alumni, students and staff, a microcosm of 1871 culture and practice. Organized by Melvin Bacani ('90) and James Valadez ('99) with help from Alumni Relations, the IMSA room and hallway are filled with recent graduates, not-so-recent grads, interns, new startups, job seekers, mentors and investors. Literally, the entire entrepreneurship pipeline, IMSA's vision for joining 1871, is represented.

For some, the meeting is an introduction to 1871. For others, it's an opportunity to give their elevator pitch, share business cards and make appointments. Speaking only for myself, I meet Reggie ('02), an attorney involved in mergers and acquisitions who is interested becoming involved in a TALENT Monday Night Live session on "legal stuff every entrepreneur needs to know." I promise to connect Paul ('89) a leader of a new media marketing team with businesses involved in the formation of Matter, the new healthcare incubator going in down the hall from 1871. I help connect Brandon ('04) who is heading up a new startup with Moises, a TALENT board member--who is passing by in the hallway--to learn more about financing a business. I listen as Ravi ('09) and Tom ('09) (they are now members at 1871 with their start up Study Cloud) and Milosz ('14) exchange business cards with the latter's promise to introduce Study Cloud to a new college out east this fall. I get ideas from Andrew ('14) one of our TechStars interns for new ways to engage IMSA students in TALENT teams this year (I'm thinking this could be new programming for the Innovation Hub). There's more. All together, it's a week's worth of work in 90 minutes.

Today was the second time in a week I was at 1871. From an IMSA perspective, I was not alone. There is a significant IMSA presence at 1871 this summer. Most of the students and alumni are interning with businesses. Here are the individuals I saw today.

IMSA Alum, Dane Christianson was recently featured on the Steve Harvey show with his new product, the X-Cube. Dane had the idea for this back in middle school and designed the prototype on a 3-D printer. While Dane was a member of the TALENT program at IMSA, he won first place in the Power Pitch contest for a different product (No-Vamp) that promised to reduce electricity consumption at the wall outlet. Just One More Thing you can do with a 3-D Printer. Congratulations, Dane!

Sign up to attend the Finals to hear seven teams compete for cash prizes sponsored by Chase Bank. The list of teams appears here

Since CoolHub was conceived in early 2009 and launched in spring of that year, it took us 31 months to reach our first 1000 members, 27 months to reach 2000 members (Nov. 1, 2013). We are well on our way to 3,000 members (currently over 2,400--the number of members shown in the left hand column does not account for all member types). Over 400 in less than 5 months thanks to the Mentor Matching engine.

We always predicted that once we reached 2,000 members, growth would accelerate!

Monday, March 10th is the Prelim Round for Power Pitch at 1871. The Sixth Annual Power Pitch Contest kicks off at 6 pm in the 1871 Auditorium. Each of the twenty-three teams presents a 60-second elevator pitch followed by a science fair style event where the audience and judges can visit displays to learn more about exciting new tech businesses from their creators. The event if open to the public and free. Over 15 judges from leading startups and businesses will be on hand to evaluate business models. The audience also gets a vote. The "audience favorite" is automoatically included in the Finals held on April 29, again at 1981. Judges will choose five additional teams to participate in the Finals. TALENT, sponsored by the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, is an extracurricular program that is open to high school students around the state who want to start up a business. TALENT maintains several projects in CoolHub.

Liferay Sync is free software that works a lot like Dropbox for CoolHub. With Liferay Sync installed, you can drag and drop files into and out of folders in your CoolHub projects without having first to log in to CoolHub. This saves a number of clicks and enables more powerful document and folder control. For example, upload files in folders nested within folders and the folder hierarchy is preserved--this is not possible using the standard Library tools.

Who should use this? Anyone who uploads multiple files to Liferay. You can also drag and drop files to new folders, create and delete folders, all with just a mouse click.

Download the software from Liferay. This requires setting up an account (one time only) on Liferay. Once the software is downloaded and installed, you can set up your preferences by launching the application and setting preferences to include your CoolHub username and password. You can choose which projects to sync (you have to be a member of the projects). When you start the application from then on, it logs you into CoolHub in the background.Open the Sync folder and get to work.

IMSA math faculty member Noah Prince created the Graph Theory Project as a result of working with the IMSA Fusion program. Middle school students visiting the Fusion program enjoy a one-hour math lesson on Noah's favorite branch of mathematics, graph theory. Graph theory, a subject that students find exciting and engaging is not typically a part of traditional math curricula.

In this project, teachers will find lessons that could be incorporated in their classrooms. Lessons are linked to the Common Core State Standards and are accompanied by thorough "teacher's notes" so that instructors feel confident leading classes through the material.

The Core Project was created to support investigations regarding the impact of humans on the environment. By studying fossils in core samples it is possible to detect changes over time. The Core Project is a good example of using CoolHub for content, in this case, a flash-based activity that engages learners in identifying fossils at different depths of a core sample, then interpreting the findings. This project was created by Stephanie Crook, with assistance from CoolHub staff in creating the interactive Flash core.

According to Stephanie, the core was taken from a pond in the Miller Woods. The fossils were found when the samples were sorted at Brown University.

The core activity was recently highlighted at a workshop at the Indiana Dunes. It is useful for teaching about soils in Environmental Science classes. For more information, visit the Indiana Dunes Curriculum Activities site.

Visit the Core Activity and imagine your own uses for this resource and ways to use CoolHub to support your teaching.